


The Outsiders' Guide to Paris

by wreathed



Category: British Comedy RPF
Genre: Epistolary, Humor, M/M, Paris (City)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 02:42:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11522856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: The Guardian ask David and Charlie to try out some travel writing.





	The Outsiders' Guide to Paris

**Author's Note:**

> Set in that magical kingdom where anything can happen (2009 to 2010-ish).
> 
> Thank you to [emef](http://archiveofourown.org/users/emef/pseuds/emef) for the read-through!

_Paris. The most romantic city in the world. We dispatched satirical columnists and reluctant travellers David Mitchell and Charlie Brooker to see whether you really need to be loved up when you’re there to have a good time._

 

David Mitchell

When I was called up and asked if I’d like to be paid to go on holiday, I jumped at the chance. It was a bit of a no-brainer, to be honest. Being paid to go on holiday! This is what it must have been like for the presenters of _Holiday_. Poor Craig Doyle. Life as a double glazing salesman probably offers far fewer opportunities for glamourous international travel.

I assumed I’d be sent on my own – after all, there’s a recession on – but I was mistaken: fellow Guardian Media Group columnist and bitter middle-aged man Charlie Brooker was to accompany me. Even better, I decided. He’s not bad company, and when I do inevitably get annoyed by him, I’ll just piss off to my own room – luxurious, peaceful, but, above all, _free_. If you decide to go on holiday off the back of this feature, your hotel room of course will not be free, but that’s just your sorry lot in life.

So where would we be going for this brief yet enchanting excursion? South Africa? Australia? Some advertorial-ready tropical island paradise? Of course not, there’s a recession on. To tell you the truth, despite the fact that I could have hopped on the Eurostar from St Pancras any old weekend from a mere £78 return, I was quite relieved. I went interrailing once. It was fucking horrible, and that’s largely the full extent to which I wish to travel the world, at least by rail. Paris? Fine. Not only do you not have to travel very far, but it’s actually very similar to London expect for the fact that everyone speaks more French, has more sex, and the underground stations smell far more of piss. But it’s fancy French piss, so it’s actually nicer.

“Don’t call it interrailing,” my editor insisted. “We’re pitching it less gap year twatting about, more environmentally-conscious travelogue.” So you have my word: it’s not interrailing, it’s environmentally friendly (trains, see?), and you have the added bonus of not having to put your shampoo inside a miniature bottle inside a little plastic bag. Now, where was I?

Having dutifully swotted up on my schoolboy French beforehand (it’s come in more useful than my schoolboy Latin, at least until they work out how to make that time machine for Virgin Galactic-branded breaks to ancient Rome), I was disappointed to find that the staff of the hotel were positively determined to speak English as soon as I started stumbling through my first sentence. This will either please or anger you, depending on your temperament. Naturally I’m at my most pleased whenever I’m angry, so I left the polite and efficient check-in process feeling very relaxed. 

Later that evening, after an intense testing of the hotel rooms’ furniture (nobody likes a too-firm mattress, and I intend to do this travel-writing lark properly), I stayed in Charlie’s room for a bit because it was a bit nicer than mine. To cut a long story short, we ended up raiding the hotel’s minibar – I refused to pay such extortionate prices for Borrower-sized cans of beer, but Charlie insisted and said that the paper would pick up the bill. Many units later, I ended up falling asleep on him. It's nothing less than what he deserves for letting us drink so incredibly expensively.

What also taught us our lesson, apart from the hangover, is that the Guardian told us rather unceremoniously that we would be paying the minibar bill. There’s a recession on.

Astute readers and subeditors (those are separate, mutually exclusive terms) will notice that I’m not that far off my word limit, meaning I’ve left little time to actually describe to you what we did in Paris. All I can do is apologise to my editor and feel some concern that I might not be invited back for any more travel related side jobs (harder than it looks, it turns out – somebody give Craig Doyle a belated pay rise and a new set of windows).

The Guardian hadn’t given us much guidance on what to actually do once we got here, so we mostly did Paris activities that have been arbitrarily deemed ‘romantic’ by those listicles your aunt keeps posting on Facebook to find out if they were still fun regardless. They, of course, were. (Except for our brief visit to Sabbia Rosa. That was just bewildering.) But the view from Montmartre is always lovely, the Eiffel Tower is a lot of fun and the Arc de Triomphe is a fantastic opportunity to learn about French history whether you’ve come to Paris with your spouse, your sister or your pet dog. If the French let your pet dog in, that is.

We also ate quite a lot of French food, which tasted very nice.

So, Charlie and I will always have Paris. But so will the thirty million or so tourists who visit the city each year. And that _argumentum ad populum_ (schoolboy Latin) is good enough for me.

 

Charlie Brooker

I hate Paris. The last time I was here, I had such a terrible time that my then-girlfriend and I broke up straight after. She blamed my crippling selfishness and constant need for attention, but I blame the city.

When I was told I would be going here instead of, say, the Maldives, or anywhere that had a nice sunny beach and not too many bloody _people_ , I was a tad annoyed. My mood didn’t improve when I was told that David Mitchell would be accompanying me. Don’t get me wrong, he’s great company, but I envisioned him complaining about everything from the crowds of confused tourists to the Metro system. (I would be proved right.) Plus he’s not even a proper journalist, he’s a comedian. Whereas I started in print and moved to television, he seems to have done the opposite. Which is quite frankly the wrong way around. Writing on bits of dead tree is a diminishing method of communication, but who doesn’t love a bit of great telly?

We got the train over, which mostly filled me with a profound sense of relief because we didn’t get sent any tickets until the last minute and I’d been worried we’d be expected to make like David Walliams and swim across.

When we got to the hotel check-in desk, David started speaking French, which was surprisingly charming, but he must not have been very good because the receptionist kindly put a stop to it.

We were booked to have dinner at _La Tour d'Argent_ that evening. The first course was oysters. David got all clammy (HA HA HA) at the thought of eating something so allegedly arousal-inducing, until I reminded him that he was here with me. Then we drank a fair amount of champagne, mostly because we weren’t paying for it. From what I can remember of this restaurant, it was very good, but if you go don’t be like me and turn up in a t-shirt because it’s quite posh. David’s stern expression will haunt me for the rest of my days.

Other than that we weren’t actually told what to do once we had got here, so I’m assuming this feature is mostly to plug the hotel. One thing you can say about the Guardian: they’re money grabbing bastards. (The hotel is lovely. Stay at the hotel, especially if you’re an oligarch or recent winner of the National Lottery.) 

Let’s face it, you’re a sensible middle-class newspaper reader. You’ve probably not only been to Paris already, but you’ve been enough times to have seen all the main famous attractions _and_ wandered through some side streets to find that romantic spot special to just you. Because you’re in such a lovely couple. Why are you even reading this, you sad sack of happiness? Go away and watch _Supernanny_ or whatever it is you people do. You disgust me.

David wanted to go to the Arc de Triomphe, so we did that. Then there was an underwear shop called Sabbia Rosa that we found on Google that was meant to be oh so romantic so we thought it would be funny to go there, but it only sold women’s things and it was eye-wateringly expensive so we soon shuffled out in an embarrassed, British sort of way.

Then on to the Eiffel Tower, which I’d last been up with aforementioned ex-girlfriend. It was cold, because it was high up and we were there in March, but it was quite good. Far too busy though, and I’m not sure what this paragraph is adding to the travelogue credentials of this column, because you knew about the Eiffel Tower already.

Do you need to be loved up to love Paris? Of course you don’t. But if you go and you are, stop putting padlocks on the Pont des Arts, you idiots, they’re making the bridge too heavy and the city has to keep contracting people to take them all off. There’s no need to be so open and obvious about how much you apparently love each other. I loathe all of humanity and am off to shoot myself in the head.

Aaaarrrgggghhhh still needs 100 more words somewhere jesus christ 

 

 **@freyasinclare:** I swear I just saw Mark Corrigan and some guy with gray hair holding hands by the Eiffel tower??

 **@freyasinclare:** @Alyscol hahaha yeah david mitchell. not sure if it is him, actually.

 **@freyasinclare:** @Alyscol thnks for pic! that's who he looked like! charlie brooker! wtf. must have been a pair of randos I was staring at then (oops lol)

 

_Do you need to be loved up to love Paris? Of course you fucking don’t, that’s a fucking imbecilic premise, but it definitely helps you to warm to the place if you end up having fucking incredible sex in both of your thousand thread count sheet-covered beds that you yourselves didn’t even have to shell out for–_

 

“You _can’t_ write that,” David says from over Charlie’s shoulder, blushing. “Delete that right now!”

“What, all of it? I’ve spent forty five minutes crafting this!”

David sighs, rolls his eyes. “Just the last paragraph, obviously.”

Charlie grins up at David as he hovers his mouse pointer tantalisingly over the draft’s send button.

“ _Don’t!_ ” says David, in a voice a bit too high-pitched to not be serious, and Charlie suddenly feels very guilty and lifts his hands up and away from his computer.

“I was never going to actually do it,” he says sheepishly.

“Anyway,” David says, tentatively placing his hands on Charlie’s shoulders. That gets Charlie’s attention. “What I was actually coming over to ask was whether you’d like to… er… If you can lower yourself to the level of my flat, I mean.” He glances over Charlie’s draft copy. “I don’t think the thread count of my sheets is particularly high, but I’m proud to say that they were bought from John Lewis.”

Charlie feels another grin rise out of him – something, happily, he’s been doing a lot more of just recently. “Yeah,” he says to David softly. “I’d like that.”

 

_David and Charlie were staying at the Hotel Plaza Athenee. Doubles from €978._


End file.
